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No other organization
may be more cognizant of
the truck parking issue than
NATSO.
“With the issue of solving
truck parking, we still have
a long way to go,” says Lisa
Mullings, NATSO’s president
and CEO. “The DOT has
done a great job of bringing
stakeholders together and
having more conversations
that I think we needed
to have. There are so many groups involved in the
conversation and it’s a complicated issue, so I think
any kind of solution needs to involve a lot of different
groups, from the trucking companies, the truck drivers
themselves, to the shippers/receivers and also the
truck stop operators and state government. There are
a lot of different people and groups involved in this.”
Mullings said fuel contract negotiations between
truck stop operators and motor carriers could help
provide funding for new spaces.
“If the trucking companies would go to our members
when they’re negotiating fuel contracts and say, ‘We
want a part of this for you to provide our drivers with
this number of parking spaces and this needs to part
of this deal with you,’ I think that we would quickly see
this problem — at least in situations where it can be
fixed — fixed,” Mullings said. “I think that would be the
fastest road forward, because one of the reasons the
smaller-size truck stops in late 1990s into the 2000s
did so well was because the price of fuel was the only
important thing to a fleet that was negotiating with one
of our members.”
But, Mullings cautions, the problem is never going to
go away entirely.
“You’re never going to be able to build parking right
outside Los Angeles; you’re never going to be able
to build enough parking right outside New York,” she
said. “There are always going to be places where it’s
going to be difficult because land is very expensive and
there’s no way that someone could build parking for
all trucks to go in and out of these cities. But I think in
all the other instances you could probably fix it by just
doing that.”
OOIDA’s Director of Government Affairs Mike
Matousek recalled an instance in meetings at OOIDA’s
headquarters when a representative of the Missouri
Department of Transportation presented some
interesting concepts.
“He highlighted some things that Missouri has
done to address this as far as converting antiquated
weigh stations into truck-only parking and doing the
same with rest areas, and doing it in a cost-effective
manner,” Matousek said. “Basically, they are tearing
down what needs to be torn down, throwing down
some asphalt or gravel depending on the location, and
putting in a vault toilet.”
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8 Truckload Authority | www.Truckload.org TCA 2018